I didn't do much on Tuesday. The highlight was going to Tom-Toms and getting a $4 grande latte (which they say grande latteo). I went back to Home Plus and tried to buy more food. My unadventurous eating led me to buy the same kind of pork buns I had been enjoying only this time they were pork dumplings and ate 5 of them as my dinner. Um, that was a bit of a mistake as clearly my body is still warming up to the idea of eating meat in the first place.
On Wednesday I was determined to figure out the bus system and get the heck out of my Officetel and my neighborhood. I was determined to NOT spend any part of my day at Home Plus which is soul-sucking and terrible.
After hours of researching online I
finally found a bus route map in English. It was part of the
Kyung Hee University website and I was finally able to understand where the heck all the busses are going. Ironically, when I finally got to the bus stop I saw that the words "Suwon Station" were clearly marked in English and that's where I was headed. Doh! I still did need that English directory though, so no real loss there.
The local bus costs w900 to ride which is equivalent to about $0.90. It took me about 20 minutes to ride to Suwon Station which is where I was the other evening when I did Karaoke. The following is essentially the same shot that I took at night, but in the daytime. (They cleaned up the streets, as you can see.)
At Suwon Station I finally got to eat some real hot food that I could order and not feel terribly single and out of place. Well, ok, I still felt out of place. That will probably happen for a long time, if not the whole time that I am here.
The place I went to was called Han's Deli and I chose it because I saw other single people eating at the restaurant so I knew it would be ok for me to be there. This was by no means a typical Korean restaurant, nor was it quality food, and I knew that going into it but dude, I hadn't had a good meal in days and I've probably lost 5lbs already.
This is seafood udon. Probably more Japanese than Korean but they eat Udon noodles here too. Mostly I ate the noodles and the veggies as the shrimp and squid were sub-par. Then again, I only paid w4,500 for it.
Here is a picture I took out the window of the restaurant, which, if you want to picture the inside decor, think Noodles & Company or Paradise Bakery or something of that sort.
What you see in the foreground of the picture is the entranceway to the subway line. I have not attempted to take the subway yet. That will be my next adventure.
With some food in my body I was ready to go walk around. I made sure I was wearing high heels because ALL Korean girls where high heels all the time. I don't know how they walk around in their stilettos on the cobble stone and uneven ground surfaces, but they do. Now, when I wear high heels I am taller than not just all the ladies, but the men too. Being white and taller than everyone, there is no blending in. Might as well be a tourist, right? I took a few pictures of the Suwon Station area:
This picture helps understand the massive advertising that goes on all of the buildings. It's really quite intense. But then you walk around and you realize that most of that stuff isn't all that important.
Basically it is like this: let's say you work in an office building in a city in North America. The building you work in is, say, 6 stories high. In that building there might be a few lawyers' offices, a dentist, an import/export office, and so on. And you'd never know the wiser unless you happen to walk up and look at the directory inside the building. Not in Korea. In Korea they have those directories too, but they also let you know what each office is inside, so thats what all the signs are telling you. Many of the buildings hold the private "hogwan" schools that you hear people talking about.
The last picture at Suwon Station is this one:
It's not the most exciting photo, I know but that is because the real gem is on the inside. Inside that building on the right is a mall. It is a big big mall but it is also part of the subway station. Inside were massive department stores, many restaurants with great views of the city, and a bookstore.
I went into the bookstore but it was a bit of a disappointment because of one reason: plastic wrapping. I don't know why but all of the English books were wrapped in plastic so that you could not leaf through it. Were the Korean books and magazines in plastic? No. I was about to leave the bookstore when I spotted a favorite kids book, No David! in Korean and I thought I'd look through that. Oh what? An obviously English book in Korean? Yep, that was plastic-wrapped too. Oh well.
My feet were killing me anyway. Remind me not to try to go native and wear high heels all day long. I took the bus back home.
***
Later that evening I went out with this guy named Taylor I found on the CouchSurfing website and a bunch of his friends. They all work in a Hogwan in the next neighborhood over from me (about a w4,000 in cab-fare), called Maetan. Hogwan (private school) schedules are atypical from a normal workday. They work from 2pm - 10pm and so they go out to bars all the time since they have nothing to wake up for the next day. But at the same time, I could tell that they were jealous of me and my public school job where I have more vacation time, higher pay, and a bigger apartment. I was jealous because there were so many foreigners per school compared to just me in my school.
So I met lots of people that night. At 26 I was the oldest of them all. I think the average age of that group was 23 or so.
There was: Adam from Canada; Adam from the U.S.; Tara from Ireland; Liz from southern England; Anthony from Manchester, England, and his Korean girlfriend Leona; Meredith from New Zealand; Laura from Ireland; Jean from Ireland; Taylor from Omaha, Nebraska, and his Korean girlfriend, Jin; Blake from Oklahoma; another girl from Oklahoma whose name I did not catch, and me. That's 13 people for those keeping count. Yay me for remembering (almost) all their names and places of origin!
At 2:30am I called it a night and paid my w6,000 of beer. They all invited me back at anytime to hang out with them. With the exception of Blake who had only been there for a month, most of the kids there had been in Korea for almost a year. In 2 weeks a few of them were leaving and they are having a goodbye party at an Indian restaurant at Suwon Statoion. If I don't go visit Nicole & Sam in Goeje, I will go to that.
Interesting enough, it is worth mentioning that they all really liked Korea and several of them wanted to renew their contracts or continue to teach abroad in other countries. A good sign.
Well, that's all for now. Leave a comment and let me know you are reading this! I know it was a long post..
